


Juno Steel and the Magnus Archives

by aesphantasmal



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Episode: s01e01-02 Juno Steel and the Case of the Murderous Mask Update | 2 Mask 2 Murderous, Gen, Peter Nureyev (mentioned) - Freeform, but im putting it in the tma tag as well cause jons here, death mention, murder mention, murderous mask but in a magnus archives way, tma au of tpp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesphantasmal/pseuds/aesphantasmal
Summary: Statement of Juno Steel, regarding a mask that used to be owned by Croesus Kanagawa before his murder.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 70





	Juno Steel and the Magnus Archives

**Author's Note:**

> what up i havent written fanfic in 4 years and this is unbeta'd and also bad but i finished it so figured i might as well post it

"Gotta say, I expected more red string/tinfoil hat stuff around here," the person sitting on the other side of Jon's desk said. He was looking around the room as Jon put his laptop away and got out a tape recorder.

"We're an academic institution, not conspiracy theorists," Jon said, putting the tape recorder down on the desk.

"Sure. What happened with the computer recording, anyway?"

"It gets a bit distorted sometimes. You're going to have to restart from the beginning, I'm afraid."

"Ready when you are, I guess."

"Alright. We'll try again." Jon turned on the tape recorder. "Statement of Juno Steel, regarding …"

"A...  _ weird _ mask that used to be owned by Croesus Kanagawa. Before he was murdered."

"Right. Statement recorded direct from subject, 20th March 2016. Statement begins."

Juno took a deep breath, then started talking. "I'm a private investigator. Have been for quite a few years now. So I've seen a lot of weird stuff. And — do you know who the Kanagawas are?"

"Against my will, yes," Jon replied.

"Well, I've dealt with them before, too. Saved Cecil Kanagawa's life, once, before Croesus punched my lights out and said he'd do a lot worse if I ever showed my face around there again." Juno spoke in a nonchalant tone, like he regularly received death threats. "That was a few years ago. I did stay away — as much as I could, anyway — up until a few weeks ago. Story was all over the news, but it's just easier if I explain the whole thing. I got a call on the first telling me Croesus was dead. And at first I thought the whole thing was some kind of elaborate joke, 'cause Croesus didn't seem like the kinda guy who just died, y'know? But Sasha — she's the one who contacted me about it —"

"Full names, if you can give them, please," Jon cut in.

"Uh, Sasha Wire — she's not really the joking type. Pretty sure she works for some intelligence agency — she won't tell me much, says everything's 'classified'. Plus, she hadn't spoken to me in fifteen years, so she wasn't exactly going to call me just to try and mess with me. Her people sent a guy who called himself Rex Glass to tag along with me. He was — uh — that's not really relevant." Juno created his throat. "Uh, So anyway, Glass and I went to Kanagawa's mansion. Didn't immediately get all of our bones broken, so I knew things must be pretty serious. I'll…" Juno paled slightly. "I'll spare you the gory details of what Croesus looked like when they found him. The important bit — important as in most relevant to what I'm doing here — is that there was this creepy mask that… I dunno, I guess it could have just been regular creepy bullshit. Kanagawa keeps — kept — plenty of that kind of junk around, whole room was full of it — but I swear it must have moved on its own. Croesus got thrown into its case and I'm pretty sure either the blood loss from the glass killed him or he just hit the wall hard enough to fracture his skull — I didn't really want to take a closer look. But the mask somehow fell onto his face and wrapped itself round his head. It was stuck on there tighter than it could have been if it just fell on there. I couldn't get it off, but when Rex did and I got a good look at it, I couldn't see anything on the back that would have made it squeeze his head like that. Anyway, we couldn't really get that much off of the crime scene, so we went around and talked to the family. Cass said she'd been out, and that she'd never noticed anything weird about the mask but Croesus had bought it off of some shady antiques dealer about a month ago. I kind of noticed she was a bit off then, but I thought it was just because her dad had just been violently murdered. Then we almost got violently murdered by Cecil, then we found out him and Cass had switched place so she'd been in and he had proof. So then we went and found Cass, who was threatening Min — her stepmom, Croesus' wife, nasty piece of work, " he clarified at Jon's blank expression. "Anyway, Cass was waving a gun around and — I've known Cass for a while, and I knew this wasn't her. Sure, she's angry and doesn't have great impulse control, but she wasn't the snap-and-kill-your-family type. I distracted her long enough for Rex to grab the gun. Don't think either of us were expecting her to throw him halfway across the room — he's… tall, but doesn't seem like he'd be very heavy, but even then, I don't think Cass is strong enough to throw him a third of the distance that she did."

Juno paled again. He looked less like he was about to throw up than he had when talking about the body, but it was still noticeable. "And that's when I felt it. I'd been carrying the mask around in a ziplock bag so my fingerprints didn't get all over it, and I felt liquid soaking through the side of my trousers from the bag. The mask was already pretty bloody — I mean, we pulled it off of what was left of Croesus' head — but it looked like it was… crying blood? Blood was coming out of where the eye holes were, and it was filling up the bottom of the bag, and it had started leaking out. Anyway, then I fainted and once I knew what was happening again, Cass was being hauled off to jail. Min was looking far too pleased with herself, and I still had a whole lot of unanswered questions. I knew the case the mask was in was opened in the night — the locks were off when we got there, and Cass said it was open even though it made her look bad — and they're the kind of weird locks you'd expect people like the Kanagawas to use, it's not like you could just pick them and be done, or like you could just leave them open. Which means someone got into the case in the night, and was probably going to steal the mask. And Croesus was mad at Cass over the case being open and she was mad at him over a show she wanted to do, and she shoved him into the mask's cabinet. And it felt like Min put all of that into motion, even though she couldn't have known about half of it. I still had no clue how Cass could suddenly throw grown adults across rooms with enough force to seriously injure them. I had a pretty good idea who'd tried to steal the mask and why, though."

Juno scowled, then continued. "I ended up with the mask. I was going to hand it over to the cops. And, I mean, there was plenty of blood on the floor, and my trouser leg , and hell — even in the ziplock bag to show the mask  _ was _ covered in blood, once I picked it up, the mask was completely dry. Not even any bloodstains on it. Rex and I went back to mine, but by that point I already knew he'd tried to steal the mask. I called the cops and they arrested him, but he didn't even get as far as the station before bailing. With the mask. So… yeah, that about covers it. Cass is in prison, mask's gone, Glass is gone, Min's happy, I don't think anyone else is."

"I see," Jon said. "And you're sure the blood couldn't have already been in the bag? It could have just been some kind of advanced technology."

Juno sighed in frustration. "Maybe. I asked my secretary and she said she hadn't heard of anything like that outside of TV, and she — uh, she knows about that kind of stuff."

"Ok, well, we'll investigate and contact you if anything more comes to light. Statement ends," Jon said, stopping the tape recorder.

"Ok. Am I done?" Juno asked.

"Unless you've got anything to add, you can leave now," Jon said. Juno stood up and picked up his coat.

"Uh, by the way, do you know there's a whole lot of worms on the way in?" Juno asked as he was halfway out the door.

"Yes, we know about the worms," Jon said. Juno raised an eyebrow at his tone, then left with a nod.

—

Juno pulled his coat around him as he left the institute. From a certain point of view, he was glad the man at the Institute — Jonathan Sims — had kind of responded like Juno was imagining things, because, in part of his mind, it still sat easier with Juno to think that maybe he had made it all up and he was going crazy, but he'd talked to enough people who'd seen things like he had that he was pretty sure they couldn't all be seeing things, and he knew when he got back to his apartment the ziplock bag and the trousers covered in blood would still be there.

He wondered how often the Institute got legitimate reports. This Jonathan Sims had to either be wildly uniformed, lying, or a complete idiot, and he didn't exactly seem like the kind of person who would be good at lying. Before coming to give his statement, Juno had looked into the institute and the archives specifically. He knew the last archivist had died on the job, no killer, no body. Didn't exactly inspire confidence in the place. That was part of why there were things he hadn't told Jonathan about. The other part— well. He had a feeling nobody involved would like how much he'd told anyway — if it got out, he expected a lawsuit from the Kanagawas on his doorstep within ten minutes. But given Nureyev's speech about his name before the police came, he had a feeling he might have had something a bit more direct than a lawsuit to worry about if he'd told that bit. (Maybe there was another reason, but he wasn't doing himself any favours thinking about that.) The other thing he'd kept to himself — we'll, he'd have laughed someone out of his office if they came in saying they were freaked out because the look on someone's face reminded them too strongly of something. And again, maybe he was imagining things, or hell, maybe he'd been a detective too long and was seeing patterns where they didn't exist, but he'd seen Cass's face when she was threatening them and suddenly he was nineteen again and his brother was lying dead on the floor and his mother was still holding the blaster.

—

"This is the rare case where many details of the story are relatively easy to verify." Jon sipped his tea. "Croesus Kanagawa was murdered in his own home by his daughter Cassandra either very late on February 28th or very early on March 1st 2016. Cause of death was either blood loss or blunt force trauma. Quite a few of the articles mention Mr Steel by name. None of the ones Martin could find mentioned the stolen mask and this 'Rex Glass', though if what Mr Steel says is correct, the police probably wouldn't be eager to let that story spread through the press. Sasha did some digging and found an article in a local paper talking about two police officers being found tied together outside of their car with the person they were transporting having escaped, as described by Mr Steel, though with no mention of a link to Croesus Kanagawa's death." Jon sighed. "Other than that — and regarding the supposed supernatural elements of the statement — we were unable to contact Cassandra Kanagawa due to her incarceration, so that's out as far as verification goes. Given that we didn't have his real name, I think you can guess how well trying to find 'Rex Glass' went. I decided there was no point in going up against an intelligence agency to get any confirmation of anything from Sasha Wire, and Elias has apparently had dealings with Min Kanagawa before, and told me not to bother trying to contact her for any details. All of that gives me reason to suspect Mr Steel may have imagined or exaggerated elements of the story that could not be fact checked. Recording ends."

**Author's Note:**

> i do have more stuff for this au in my notes i dont have plans to write more for it but that could change anyway hmu @aesphantasmal on tumblr or comment here


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